Wool Felting in a Plastic Bag

So... Roc day (Distaff day, the day after epiphany) has come and gone. This is a special day for spinners, the time for the women to get back to work after the 12 days of Christmas have passed (the men get to wait until the Monday after epiphany. Hmm...). In celebration, I made a short (20 min.) video about how to make a felted woolen coaster inside a plastic zipper bag. An idea for a 'make & take project or a quickie workshop with kids or something like that. The video pretty well tells the whole story, but there may be a few things I can add here. 

~ I neglected to mention that the first layers of wool should be placed at 90 degree angles to each other. They will mesh best that way. For a third layer, I often place the wool at something like a 45 degree angle and it seems to mesh fine.

 

~ Many people say to use warm soapy water to felt. I find the warmth is not all that important. As far as soap, it should not be too frothy or the wool might just start slipping about. 

~ The blue bubble wrap I mention is some kind of industrial strength builders supply stuff, I think. You could also cut up a shipping envelope from something you received in the mail; they can be pretty sturdy.

 

~ I didn't really roll the pre-felt with a pool noodle 100 times. As it turned out, I probably only did it about 50 or so. It came together pretty quickly. And, since you want 'sticky outtie' bits of wool all around, you don't want to overfelt at that point. 

~ I mentioned that I would often use white wool when making the prefelt. The reason for that is because I feel it makes the colors on the outer design show up better and not get muddy looking. And it creates a buffer between the two outside designs too, so they won't interfere with each other.

~ The 'confetti' should really have a touch of wispy wool over it here and there just to be sure it will be well attached.

~ Don't be afraid to get a bit rough with this. It will help it felt better if it is tossed, pounded and pummeled a bit after eveything has been added.

Well, I've really got to watch the video again to see if there are other tips to add~ but in the meantime, I'm going to publish this wee blog post to make the video more 'find-able'.
Cheers~

ROC Day Felting Mini Workshop

ROC day 2018 with the Black Sheep Handspinners Guild was a wonderfully fun experience here in Lansing, NY. It had to be put off for a couple of months due to the snowy winter weather, it was shorter than expected, but we managed to cram in loads of stuff! I was responsible for a quick little intro to felting workshop~ we tossed some fun bits of wool and things on a pre-felted surface, sprayed it with soapy water, rolled it up and started the felting process. After I took it home, I went to town and got it all felted together. Here I'm going to share photos of what I did and the results. The finished piece has been entrusted to another spinner who will, hopefully, show it off at the April meeting.

Up to the left is the piece after it was wrapped in a towel around a pool noodle and rolled about 100 times in each direction, top and bottom.

On the right, you can see how the piece has shrunk more on the far end than the closer end. At this point, the far end had been rubbed between my hands a number of times, until I could see and feel the felting happening.

Here are closeups of some of the bits and pieces. You can see that the locks were having a little trouble sticking on and the silk needed a little extra wool tossed over it so it would stay down nicely. A little more rolling and rubbing was done to get these bits to stick down better.

Once that step was completed, I decided to do a bit of cutting and pre-shaping. Slits were cut all along one side, while the other side was pulled into a kind of scalloped edge. The ends were pulled and rubbed between my hands into a rather random shape.

Once it all looked like it was going to stick and I could see a little shrinkage occurring, it was time for fulling to begin. I took it to the sink, ran warm water over it, added a little soap, squeezed it out and then tossed it against my steel sink about 100 times. It was put in a bath of cold water with some vinegar added to neutralize the soap, rung out again, and then thrown another 50 times or so. Now it was really shrinking up~ hooray!

 You can see on the left how the slits expanded into larger openings and the piece of silk took on some bumpy texture as the wool around and over it shrank. Another rinse in really hot water (off the stove), some rubbing and pulling into shape, and then a final rinse in cold water and it was ready to dry out.

It was wrapped in a towel and gently mashed to get some of the water out, then put in the dryer for about 1/2 hour. As it was still a little damp, some last minute shaping was done and then it was hung to finish drying.

On the right is the finished piece with the side we were working on at ROC day up.

To the left is the back side of the piece- see how easy it is to make it reversible?

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Making a Wet Felted 'Tulip' Bowl, A Quick Tutorial

Well, weeks ago I promised to write down directions for making this type of wet felted bowl. So, finally, here we go. I'm not going to give you detailed instructions for basic wet felting here- hopefully you've got that bit down. I refer to these as 'liriodendron' bowls, named after the tulip tree or yellow poplar.

This bowl began with a couple of layers of white wool, placed perpendicularly to each other for the base. Wool was added on each side in some pretty contrasting colors. Four layers of wool were used; more would make it even sturdier. Since both colors would be seen on the finished piece, I wanted something a bit showy~ the colors are so nice and vivid when wet! Colors were added to one side, some warm water and natural dish soap was sprayed on, then it was covered with plastic and rolled flat with a pool noodle until it was sticking together well. Then it was flipped over and colors were added to the second side, another quick roll with the noodle, and then it was all wrapped around the pool noodle with a towel around it and rolled about 100 times in each direction (Roll 100 times, unwrap, turn 90 degrees, wrap up, roll again, etc. Then flip over and do it all again). At this point things should be holding together pretty well.

When everything looks as if it is felting together and shrinking has begun, it's time to shrink it the rest of the way. This is done in different ways by different people. Here the piece was first rubbed all over and the edges were kind of rolled and rubbed to be sure they were fairly straight and well attached, then it was rinsed in very warm water, rung out and tossed against the bottom of the sink  100-150 times.
It was then rinsed in cold water with vinegar to neutralize the soap, then really hot water and then once more in really cold water. This shrinks things up a bit more.

While still wet, the corners were sewn to shape the bowl. The orange and pink side is meant to be the inside of this bowl, so the seam was sewn with that side out. Seems the inside of the bowl is what will be seen most most often, so it was bright side in! This will be flipped after sewing, but for a different look, it could be left with the sewn bits sticking out.

So here it is before the flip and after. With the corners to the inside, it kind of reminds me of a tulip.

The final step is to steam the bowl into shape. A heavy pottery bowl was placed inside this bowl to shape and weigh it down, then it was placed in a strainer over a bowl of steaming water, covered and allowed to steam for a couple of hours. After drying for a couple of days, it was ready to show off!


The idea for this type of bowl came from Lark Books '500 Felted Objects'. Sadly, I don't own this book so cannot tell you the artisan's name.